May the force be with you and make sure you use some Purell if you need to bury another Jedi’s light-saber
James (don’t call him Jim!) Lileks also wrote the following on today’s post:
Put up some Christmas lights Sunday afternoon. In response to a tweet announcing that fact, someone responded “oh, you’re one of THOSE people.” No, I am married to one of those people. She pointed out that the weather was fine and it would only get colder; did I want to stand outside with numb digits trying to fit cold stiff plastic around dead trees? No. So I got out the survivors from last year, made sure they worked (Chinese factories embed strands with nanotermites that eat away the wires over time), then wound them around a hedgerow.
Threedonia is full of Lileks fans; Charles Foster, Kriskey, Trzuprk, and I count myself among them. I read the Bleat daily for years. I sometimes wonder if I don’t know more about James’ family than my own. For the most part James Lileks seems like a fun guy to hang out with. I’m confident I’d enjoy spending time with him. Not sure if he’d find me like-able, but I’m sure we’d find plenty to talk about.
However (and there’s always a however), every once in awhile he’ll write something about himself that’s a bit disconcerting. There’s his anal retentiveness. He jokes about it, but it is truly staggering. All too often folks similarly obsessed with organizing, sorting, cleaning and hording end up worsening with age. Then there’s his fear of calamity and/or apocalypse. When he writes about how he would behave if tragedy struck, or how he believes strategy may strike he comesacross as a little overly fearful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to be prepared, but his scenarios always involve around getting the wife and Gnat and high-tailing it out of Dodge. I don’t spend a lot of time obsessing about city destroying calamity, and when I do I usually reckon I’d make sure my family got to safety and me and the other men-folk would lay back and tango with the fire-breathing lizard, or hurricane, or right wing terrorist attack.
Now there’s this. James writes,
“Put up some Christmas lights Sunday afternoon. In response to a tweet announcing that fact, someone responded ‘oh, you’re one of THOSE people.’ No, I am married to one of those people.”
Well, James, most of us ARE married to one of THOSE people. They’re called women. Mrs. Firefly always becomes panicked about the weather and the Christmas decorations too. But, Mrs. Firefly is not married to one of those people, so I tell her to calm down and not to worry. Her he-man of a husband will get the decorations up on time (and not too early) no matter what Mother Nature throws his way. In other words, James, I’m not buying your excuse. You’re throwing Mrs. Lileks under the bus in a feeble attempt to cover for your anal retentive/obsessive compulsive nature. Yes, she probably is worried about the lights, and the weather, and a million other things, but the rest of us husbands inform our wives that the Bears are playing the Bengals and Christmas can wait.
In James’ defense, this type of behavior is probably not uncommon in a household with one, female child and no males. James is outnumbered, the toilet seat stays down and Christmas begins on November 1st. There’s probably even holly and pinetree scented potpourri in his study.
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Some commie at my office has already put up a Christmas tree and I’m considering hiding it when she leaves. It’s just wrong on every level. Then again my downstairs neighbor never did take down her Christmas wreath.
Also worth adding preparing for any non-zombie related apocalypse is pointless…well maybe killer robots are a possibility too.
Very true…we can do nothing to prepare ourselves for the nanobot apocalypse.
I still have the tree from last Christmas on my porch…
I don’t put the tree up early because then I have to answer even more questions about when’s it gonna be Chriiiiiistmaaaassss????? (imagine a whining tone). We also don’t do much past a wreath on the door for outside. We told everyone that we were giving up Christmas lights and Christmas cards to “go green”. It’s really cause we just don’t want to. We’d rather spend the holidays doing stuff with the kids and not being rushed or stressed.
I love Christmas though, and the first day of December, the decorations and nativity scenes go up. But I can’t ever put them up without thinking of Steel Magnolias “I bought them clean out of Baby Jesuses ” (ok How on earth do you pluralize Jesus and is it blasphemous to do so??)
I think the mold was broken when I came along: I could care less about such things. We don’t put up outdoor lights because we know we would never take them down. We have been known to put out the 3ft. 1970s era fake candles on the porch. No need to do that until it’s actually seasonal. Christmas decorations don’t come out at least until Thanksgiving and then it’s a slow process.
Mr. James Lileks is also a favorite of mine.There aren’t many people I can read and laugh out loud and he has given me that dozens of times over. I therefore grant him forbearance in matters that border on compulsive/obsessive.
My husband the newly minted 0-6 is married to one of those people. We do not have one tree we have two and will have three and a kitchen tree.
THe day after Thanksgiving I put up one tree and then we go on the big tree hunt. This year I am thinking of sending for a really cool flocked faux tree from the Holdaysuperstore.com for the big eat in area of our kitchen. Reason being is we don’t have a front room and I’d like to see lights when people come up the drive way. Gonna put the wildlife tree in our bedroom and of course, some creative furniture moving will be happening when we get our big tree, which will be real btw. And I spent about 202 dollars on Yankee Candle Company new scents already 
. Oh yeah I am one of Santa’s Elves.
They were selling artificial trees in the PX here at least a week before Halloween. WTF?!?
After Thanksgiving, I can take. In my childhood home the tree didn’t go up until the Friday two weeks before Christmas…but we had a real tree until I was a teenager, so you couldn’t put it up too early. The plus side of having real trees!
We get ours Thanksgiving weekend. It lasts till New Years. Just gotta keep it watered and baby it along. The trees I find are very hardy anymore. We also get short needled trees. Balsams smell the best but they shed needles like my dog sheds hair. Lets just say my vacuum gets a workout eveyrday.
We have the same life cycle for our trees.
I once had a tree up till March. The roommate and I had so much trouble lugging it up the narrow and winding stairway we just couldn’t face going back down. One day I finally got tired of vacuuming the pine needles and it went out the window. Now I have a 50s aluminum tree and color wheel.
I went to the Publix at the strip mall yesterday and damned if they didn’t have the Christmas decorations over all the stores and the parking lot. Looking at that stuff in 90 degree heat a month early is wrong. Jim Lileks is a yule tool.
I’ve thrown a few trees out the window, Matt.
I like Christmas lights, but am too lazy to do them. So I take a middle way. I put up my Christmas tree (a small artificial one inherited from my parents) in front of the living room window. I put a couple electric candelabras up in the porch windows (a sort of a Norwegian tradition). That’s pretty much it for lights. Looks picturesque and Christmas card-ish from outside, and involves no exterior light stringing in the bleak midwinter.
Lars my Mom had those candleabras to. When I was a kid every window was lit including my bedroom window! Stars in the windows with lights around the edges. Thems were the salad years.
I guess I’m one of those people. I put up Halloween stuff early, too. But I’m usually the one responsible for outdoor decor at my house, including lights. My husband is responsible for getting the tree inside and fixing it in the stand so it’s straight. I hate that part. Our neighborhood is pretty serious about outdoor Christmas decorations. Our city has a competition with various categories and a best in show! It’s become a tradition that we bundle up the boys one night and drive all around the neighborhood before Christmas. Judging from the Halloween decor, I’d say it’s going to be another banner year.
I grew up with fake trees so I insist on real trees for the Firefly household. We are out of town on Thanksgiving so we sometimes buy it the Wednesday before, throw it in the stand and let the branches relax, or we but it the Sunday after, but it’s never trimmed until that Sunday. If the weather is fantastic the weekend before Thanksgiving the lights may go up then, but they are not turned on until the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We’ve tried to do the candelabra thing Stephanie and Lars discussed, but we could never get it to work. Each window gets a simple wreath and the gutters are trimmed with white lights. The lights don’t blink and they are the large, old fashioned style bulbs.
Out of sheer coincidence we closed on two of our homes the week of Christmas. The first was a home we had built, so it had no landscaping. We didn’t have many decorations yet, and only one child (who was only about 18 months old) so we decided to punt on the Holiday. On the 23rd I surprised the wife and little nipper with a four foot evergreen, complete with root ball. Man! That thing was heavy! We put it in the house, then after Christmas I dragged it outside and planted it on the far edge of the rather large yard. Our neighbors surprised us the next year by trimming it with battery-powered lights. We moved shortly after that, but I saw that tree a few years ago and it was thriving! For the second Christmas move we had more kids, and older kids, so Mrs. Firefly and I decided we needed to do something, but it would have to be small, and low-key. All the Christmas stuff was mingled with hundreds of other boxes the movers had just put in the house. We had closed on the 23rd. Well, we got a jolt of Christmas spirit that night and went crazy. When folks came to visit on the 24th it looked like we had lived there for years and it was completely decked out for the Holiday. When the kids came down the stairs in the morning they couldn’t believe it. It’s stuff like that that makes being a parent great fun for the Holidays!
The part Mrs. Firefly and I are most consistent on is the undecking of the house. On New Year’s Day we wake up and start singing, “It’s beginning to NOT look a lot like Christmas,” and ripping the decorations down. We really taunt the kids with the song, too. We ad-lib lyrics, making sure to include plenty about school starting soon, etc. Mrs. Firefly and I have a great time with it. It’s like the Grinch in the Chuck Jones version; we disassemble all the decorations with glee, singing, lauthing and taunting. Lots and lots of taunting. By noon you wouldn’t even know there had been a Christmas.
+JMJ+
You guys are all late! The McDonalds a few blocks from my home was playing Christmas carols in September!
(I had an “If I had a rocket launcher . . .” moment as soon as I got within earshot.)
“I had an ‘If I had a rocket launcher . . .’ moment”
That’s very funny, and very threedonian Enbrethiliel!
+JMJ+
This is where I get many of my new expressions.
My friends wonder at the improvement in my wit.
“Derek!”
My house is always the black hole in the neighborhood, when it comes to Christmas lights. The main reason we quit putting up lights and such was I really hated packing up all that stuff when it was over. Mrs. G-Man wasn’t about to do it herself. A few things go up on the inside of the house. Our tree is a little evergreen something or another that lives in the house year-round. It’s about 3 feet tall, which is a couple feet taller than it was when we got it.
In our old neighborhood, our friends across the street always had a huge display. One night I bought 1 string of lights and hung it around the front door. I called them up and told them to put on some sunglasses and watch when I lit up the house. I know. I’m the neighbor from hell.
Well, I’m all in favor of grabbing a nice weather day for putting up outside Christmas decorations, but the day after Halloween seems a mite premature.
… especially if it’s on the wife’s recommendation AND there’s NFL football on TV.
I managed to give away our fake tree (which was given to us) when we moved last year, but because of bad weather and no tree vendors in our small town, we never managed to find a real tree so we had NO TREE. My children are still crying and forever scarred (kidding – they didn’t even notice, and the tree at grandma’s was enough).
We did, however, put up our strings of purple Advent lights.
We have a fake tree some friends gave us. It’s the “Kids’ Tree” and they get to do whatever they want to it.
Stacie…buy a fake tree on the internet. There are all kinds of good websites for trees. Trust me. Thats where I got my German Twig Tree. Frontgate.com. Treeclassics.com. A lot of good sites.
But I want a real one! Because I am spoiled…
Although I will look at your sites (thanks!) because maybe I only dislike fake trees because the one I had was such a pain to assemble.
Do you hang a pickle on your German Twig tree?
Makes me think “German Twig Twee”.
I have relatives that do the pickle on the twee.
Well another way to look for a real tree is do a google search of tree farms in your area. You make a day of it, and bring the ax and rope to tie the tree you choose to your car. Its a lot of fun, you bring the kids and the dog if you have one, pay whatever the farmer is asking for and then go out and find the tree you like best.
Stephanie,
Firstly I want to thank you for trying to help. I do appreciate it! But (of course BUT) the nearest tree farm is impossibly far away. Farmers in this area only grow coal. There is a forest (nearish), and cutting permits available (cheap!), but that only works if it isn’t blizzarding every weekend after Thanksgiving. Wish us luck this year.
p.s. Your house sounds like it looks great for the season.
Yeah…party at Stephanie’s place!
I have to admit that this thread has me looking forward to getting out the decorations…and it’s all the fault of Mrs. Lileks. I didn’t mean to sound anti-Christmas. I love it but I just know if we put outside lights and decorations they may not get put away. I can be sure the inside stuff will get put away because I’m in charge of that kind of stuff, not the spouse.
Watch out for the squirrels.